There is a strong market for manufacturing and crafting tools for use by individual crafters. Interest in making handmade crafts and jewelry on an individual basis continues to grow. Individuals can buy and assemble off-the-shelf components, components made by other individual crafters, or make their own components. Increasing numbers of crafters opt to make their components or purchase them from other crafters.
Metal discs, also referred to as stampings, are a large category of jewelry components. Currently, people wanting to make their own stampings in volume have limited choices. They can buy ready-made stampings which are more expensive than making them themselves. They can purchase stamping presses and stamping dies which also turn out to be quite expensive. They can use a traditional jewelry disc cutter which is relatively low cost but is often inconvenient for high volume production. Another option is to make individual “pancake dies” to use in a hydraulic press; this is a relatively inexpensive option but not suited for high volume production of consistently sized stampings.
Traditionally, stamping dies used in presses are self-contained units consisting of a die shoe that hold a punch, die, and stripper plate. In order to change individual components, the whole unit must often be disassembled and then reassembled which takes considerable time.
Disc cutters are fairly simple devices that have a top guide plate, punch, and die. Because of their simplicity, they may contain multiple stamp designs on one unit and do not require a press to stamp out parts. Parts are stamped by placing material between the top guide plate and die. A punch is inserted into the top guide plate and struck with a hammer to push the punch through the material. Since they do not have a part stripper plate, the punch must pass completely through the material being stamped and drop out of the bottom die plate in order to advance the material for the next stamping to be punched.